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Friday, September 21, 2001
By Edward Walsh, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- Fearful of offending the world's Muslims, the Pentagon is rethinking and will probably change the code name "Operation Infinite Justice" that it initially suggested for the planned U.S. retaliation against those it considers responsible for last week's terrorist attacks against the United States, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday.
At a Pentagon briefing, Rumsfeld was told by a reporter that several Islamic scholars had objected to the name, arguing that only God, or Allah, can impose infinite justice. "I understand. I understand," Rumsfeld replied. "And obviously, the United States does not want to do or say things that create an impression on the part of the listener that would be a misunderstanding, and clearly that would be."
Rumsfeld, who will decide what to call the operation, said he did not know if the "Infinite Justice" name would be retained but added, "I doubt it."
His remarks underscored the sensitive nature of the U.S. response to a terrorist attack widely seen as the work of Arab Muslims. Osama bin Laden, the radical Muslim who declared "holy war" against the United States in the 1990s, has been described by U.S. officials as the likely mastermind of the attacks in New York and Washington.
But U.S. officials also have stressed they will need the cooperation of Arab and Muslim countries to win the "war against terrorism" that President Bush has declared. The United States already has put enormous pressure to cooperate on Pakistan.
"I don't think it can be said often enough that this is not an effort that is aimed at any religion or any people particularly, or even the people of a country," Rumsfeld said.
Bush sought to make the same point Monday when he visited the Islamic Center of Washington and admonished the country not to punish innocent Arab Americans and Muslims because of the terrorist attacks. But earlier in the crisis Bush came under criticism for describing the U.S. response as a "crusade," a term that evoked images of the bloody effort by Western Christians to expel what they considered illegitimate Muslim occupiers from Jerusalem.